Ticket to celebrity!!!

The paparazzi came to our art class the other morning. I, along with the three other members of my class, are about to be featured in a magazine article about "active" senior citizens. Would you believe.

Let me give you the back story. My friend Jackie and I go to art class on Thursday mornings at OLLI, an acronym for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. OLLI is under the aegis of the University of Miami and located on the UM campus in its own building. OLLI offers a full program of classes and lectures, but Jackie and I are only signed up for the Advanced Acryllic Painting Class. She's the advanced one, I'm a newbie, just doing the best I can and having a great time painting away llike crazy.

This week when we arrived at class we found a photographer with a lot of serious equipment and a young woman named Kathleen who represented the monthly magazine published by AV-MED the giant HMO insurance company. Neither Jackie nor I have AD-MED insurance, but that didn't seem to matter, since the article was to be about little old people who managed to stay active and weren't sitting around waiting to die.

Kathleen seemed slightly nonplussed that there wasn't one gray, or better still, snow white "cauliflower head" amongst the four of us. We also weren't on walkers or nodding off as she spoke. As a matter of fact, we are a pretty lively and very diverse bunch, ranging from effervescent red-headed Patt, in her early sixties, who has a penchant for doing marvelous mural sized paintings, to quiet, brown-haired Diane, in her mid-seventies, who does beautifully detailed water colors although this is billed as an acryllics class. Then there is elegant Jackie, who has been painting for years, and just celebrated her really big birthday that makes her the same age as moi. Neither of us has a gray hair on our heads, thanks to excellent hairdressers in the area. (A low bow to you, Louis.)

I think the fact that we were all wearing jeans and tee shirts was also slightly upsetting from a visual point of view, but Kathleen gamely carried on, asking us questions and watching us work.

If the magazine wanted "active" seniors, they got a full dose of them that morning. Danny, the professional photographer, had trouble keeping up with us, but by the end of the session had done an incredible job of catching the essence of each of us as we painted, checked constantly on each other's work in progress, and absorbed suggestions from our instructor Daphne, who is an award-winning artist in her own right.

The magazine article is due to come out in August. I'm expecting a call from a reality tv show, or at least an invitation from MOMA. Actually, I'll be more than satisfied if they spell my name right and use a flattering photo. Just in case they don't, I had the "significant other" take a photo of me with my latest painting.

Title it "The Senior Citizen Artist At Work".